99 Percent Mine: A Novel
99 Percent Mine: Chapter 4

Tom begins to stand, and the car accelerates and squeals off. Oh, to have such a big scary silhouette. Life would be so easy.

“Who was that?” Tom sinks back down.

It was Vince, coming around here like a tomcat. “No idea.”

I put a marshmallow in my mouth so I can’t talk anymore. Tom knows I’m lying, and when he begins to argue, I stuff a marshmallow in his mouth, too. He’s annoyed and amused. I felt his lips on my palm. This night isn’t all bad.

As his eye fixes onto my boot, the streetlight creates a black blade under his cheekbone. I’d click my camera right now. Now, as he looks at my legs and his lashes create a dark crescent shadow. Now, when those eyes cut to mine and there’s a spark of light in them, and another thought about me in his head. Then he looks away.

One second is all it takes to get my heartbeat flipping like a fish in a net.

I blurt, “Can I take your photo yet?”

“No,” he replies, soft and patient, like he has every time before. He doesn’t understand his own face. He has to be dragged into the Christmas picture, posed behind Megan with an unconvincing smile that looks more like concern.

Oh, that’s right. I’m a prime candidate to be taking pictures of him in a suit at the altar.

“That’s okay. Human faces aren’t really my bread and butter these days.” I link my fingers together and try to dredge up some self-control.

Get it together, Darcy. It’s not his fault he was born with your favorite kind of bones. He’s a sweet shy solid-gold human. Someone’s fiancé. You’re a teenage dirtbag. Leave him alone.

He’s clammed up completely. We’re running out of topics. Work is a safe zone. “So you’re finally your own boss. How did Aldo take it?”

Tom huffs a relieved laugh. “How do you think he took it?”

“He’s going to have to do some actual work himself. Yeah, I’d say it went badly.” I feel myself inflating with overprotectiveness. Bigger. Darker. “Do I need to go and make him apologize to you?”

Tom laughs at whatever I look like. “Don’t get growly.”

“I can’t help it. People take advantage of you. Even us.” Us means the twins.

You guys don’t take advantage of me.” He’s braced back now with his palms flat on the porch, endless legs splayed out. I lean back too, just to feel how our bodies compare. My hand is positively Chihuahua-sized next to his Valeska paw. My boot is halfway down his shin. I turn my head. My shoulder? It’s an upturned mug sitting beside a basketball.

I’m not a particularly petite woman, but he makes me feel like I’m soft. Little and light. A princess. I frown, sit up, and force myself back into a geometric shape.

“Aldo wanted to bump your house for a bigger, easier job. I said it couldn’t wait any longer. If you guys have changed your mind about renovating, I’m kinda screwed,” he says, barely joking. “I took most of the crew with me.”

“Don’t worry, we’re all good. Make the place beautiful and get me out of here.” He took the crew? I cannot imagine him making that kind of power move. I look at his brute frame in my peripheral vision, and maybe I can. “Take it from me, it’s weird not being on a payroll.” I nudge his shoulder with mine, resisting the urge to rest against him. “Thanks for choosing us over him.”

“Well, thank you. For, ah, employing me.”

“Oh, I’m your boss now?” Just as a dopamine surge fills me and I think of so many sleazy, funny responses that I could go with, the image of Megan’s face makes me bite my lip shut. Teasing him is my Olympic sport, and I can only compete once every four years. But he’s going to be her husband soon. “Think of us as business partners.”

He gives me a strange look. “Are you okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine.”

He gets to his feet. “I was bracing myself for a classic Darcy zinger. How did you manage to resist?” He holds a hand down and pulls me up so easily I momentarily leave the ground.

I sigh. Another of life’s pleasures is over. “I officially retire. For obvious reasons.”

I climb a couple of steps to be closer to his eye level. Patty is still tootling around in the garden. “Hurry it up,” I tell her, hugging my arms around my waist. “I’m getting cold.”

“What’s that?” Tom’s noticed the reddened mark on my wrist. He can always sniff out danger.

“Just a reaction to my new perfume.”

Tom reaches for my arm but stops when an inch separates our skin. He opens his hand over the mark and measures it. He’s pissed. Outraged. Mouth open from the sheer audacity. I’m surprised the sky doesn’t unfurl into black thunderclouds, crackling with lightning. “Who did it?”

“Don’t fuss.” I wrap my forearm behind my back and put more marshmallows into my mouth. Through the white sugar foam I say, “Looks worse than it is.” What a horrible sentence.

“Who did it?” He repeats it, his eyes supernatural orange. He looks back at the street. He’s going to hunt that black car down. He’s going to tear out Vince’s throat.

How does no one else ever notice this beast inside him?

“No, not that guy. Another fucking idiot at work. He knows to not do it again.”

I’ve already got my follow-up retort locked and loaded: I can take care of myself. He knows it. We stare like we hate each other.

I can feel the energy in him shimmering. He’s got thoughts and opinions, but he’s swallowing them, and they taste awful. He’s probably thinking about what he’d do to anyone who put a mark on Megan. He’d lick up blood.

“If he needs reminding, let me know,” he manages at last. He’s twisting away from me now, putting distance between us. This is something he doesn’t like about me. My dark, messy lifestyle scares the shit out of him.

I’m struggling with my temper too, for a different reason. I wouldn’t mind betting Megan’s too simple to realize what she has. She’s at home embalming herself, bleaching her cuticles and lubricating her follicles or whatever it is that well-groomed women do. She’s an aesthetician after all, and no one can trust a slovenly beauty therapist. I bet she’s staring at her own face in the mirror.

Meanwhile, her fiancé is like an apple pie on a windowsill, and this world is full of sugar addicts like me. It’s her goddamn carelessness that has always gotten me.

If he were mine . . . I can’t let myself think it.

My jaw aches from not blurting everything out. “Let’s go in.”

Valeska shakes the snow from his fur. I shake the snow from mine. He holds up an ancient key ring. “Check it out.”

“Well, that’s a blast from the past.”

It’s a key ring given to Tom by Loretta when we were kids; it’s Garfield, wearing earphones, with Odie next to him, mouth open in a bark. Printed is: SILENCE IS GOLDEN! That was Loretta’s nickname for Tom: Golden. I was Sweetness, and Jamie was Salty.

Nicknames were everywhere, growing up. Prince, Princess. My dad’s special name for Tom that made him go red and pleased: Tiger. Maybe Dad did know what we brought in that night.

“I love that you have a key,” I say without thought, like a creep. “This would be a collector’s item, probably.” I use his Garfield key to unlock the door, and he scrapes his thumbnail into the empty screw holes where my BARRETT WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY brass plaque used to be. He’s probably thinking about how I’ll never shoot his wedding. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry.” But also, I’m not.

I push the door open with my knee. He’s looking now at the remaining plaque that reads MAISON DE DESTIN, hung by Loretta to set the mood for her tarot clients. Ooh. Something about destiny. Fancy. He’s wistful as he uses his thumb to check if it’s screwed tight.

“I miss her so much,” he tells me, and we are sad and silent until Patty does her jackhammer run through our legs, sneezing and huffing. Thank you, little animal.

I click on the nearest lamp, and the first thing we see is my underwear. Above the fireplace, there’s a row of fancy black bras hanging up to dry on the old nails that once held our Christmas stockings.

“Well,” Tom says after a beat. “That would give Santa a stroke.”

I laugh and throw my keys onto the coffee table. “I wasn’t expecting company.” The echo of Vince’s car reverberates through the room like another lie. Patty sets off with single-minded determination down the hall.

“If you pee inside, you are getting in trouble,” Tom says to her departing form.

I unhook the bras and toss them on the armchair. “Christ, what a night. I’m glad you’re here.” I pull out the wine bottle and use the hem of my top to work on the screw-top lid.

He holds out a hand. It would be easy-peasy for him. “Here, I’ll do it.”

“I’m perfectly capable.” I step around him into the dark kitchen. If I’m not firm with him, he slips and starts trying to do everything for me. Princess Mode. “Do you want some? Or do good boys like you need to get into bed?”

Eyebrows down. “Good boys like me get up at five A.M.”

“Bad girls like me go to bed at six A.M.” I grin at his despairing head shake. He reaches for the light switch on the wall, but I stop him. “You’ll get a zap.”

“Seriously? Have you been zapped?” Aghast, he looks at my chest. It contains the one thing he cannot fix.

“No, because I learned from Jamie’s mistake.” I can’t help grinning. Holy fuck! Ow! Darce, stop laughing! That hurt!

“Smiling at the thought of your brother being electrocuted.” Tom doesn’t want to be amused but he can’t help it. “Such a bad girl.”

“I’m the worst.” I use a wooden spoon to flip the switch. “Okay, so it’s looking bad in here.”

I watch him scan the room from top to bottom: the water-stained ceiling, the bubbling wallpaper, the floorboards that bounce under his feet. I’ve been used to it, but now I see the full extent of the room’s shabbiness.

“Can you tell me what your fight with Jamie was about? I’ve heard his side. But I want to hear yours.” He turns away, his eyes following the line of a crack in the wall. Behind his back, I drink my entire glass of wine soundlessly. When he turns around, I’m holding a second full glass. The perfect crime.

“What can I say? My temper got the better of me.” I sip daintily.

“Okay,” Tom half laughs as he turns on the kitchen tap. It splutters and sprays him, and when he turns it off, we hear a loud dripping. He replaces the sink bucket in the cabinet underneath. “Aw, jeez.”

His phone chimes, and he looks at the screen, a smile on the edge of his mouth. He texts back, probably something like, It’s okay, I arrived safe. Miss you, Megs.

A hot feeling grabs me by the throat. I want to take his phone and flush it all the way to the sewage plant. I drink a mouthful of wine and it helps a bit.

“So, the day I made Jamie very mad. Where do I start? We had been driving each other insane. Living in bedrooms next door to each other was easy when we were kids and we had you in a bunk bed to mediate.”

But with no buffer, we were agitating and arguing. Jamie wanted us to move to the city. I wanted to stay. I couldn’t buy him out. It was a tug-of-war argument that I couldn’t win, because like Mom said, Loretta wanted us to tart up the cottage and split the money. Think of it as a little nest egg, Mom said, patting my heart.

I told her that I didn’t want a nest egg. The way I’d earned it was too much for me to bear. Mom was gentle. I’m sorry, Princess. I know what she meant to you. This is her way of showing what you meant to her.

“So there was a knock on the door one Saturday morning. Jamie was out jogging. It was early and I was very . . . tired.”

His eyes move to my glass.

“Okay, it was like eleven A.M., and I was hungover as hell. On the doorstep was some good-looking hotshot giving me his business card. I thought I was having a sex dream.”

“So far this is matching Jamie’s version exactly.” Tom unlatches the kitchen window, lifts it a fraction, then jiggles it all the way open. Only someone who practically grew up in this house would know that little trick. “I always meant to fix that for her.” Sad eyes now. He never met his own grandparents. I’m glad he could share ours.

“Loretta would have told you that window isn’t broken.” The wine is warm satin in my veins. I’m somehow pouring my third glass. Tom thinks it’s my second. Heh.

“So you were possibly having a sex dream . . . ,” Tom prompts, and I realize I’m standing in the refrigerator light, staring at nothing. What am I going to give him for breakfast? A body like that needs protein. A Viking banquet table, mugs of ale, a crackling fire. An animal skin draped low on his hips. Me, lying boneless and spent in the crook of his elbow, still asking for more.

I fill my mouth with wine and shut the fridge.

“A sex dream,” Tom prompts again.

I spray the mouthful of wine onto the fridge door. My overdue phone bill is now a watercolor.

“Yeah, so he’s got me out on the front path. He’s telling me how sorry he is about Loretta, blah blah. He was talking like he knew her. Even though he was flirty, I knew it wasn’t a sex dream, because his clothes were still on. He was bumming me out about how bad the cottage looked. Then I realized. He was a developer.”

“Douglas Franzo from Shapley Group, right?”

“Yeah.” Jamie’s probably ranted this to Tom a hundred times before. Douglas fucking Franzo! The son of the CEO! Important! Rich! Powerful! “I asked him to leave.”

“According to your brother,” Tom says on a grunt as he pulls the stiff window back down, “you went ballistic and he tore up the written offer. Then you chased his car down to the corner of Simons Street, barefoot, wearing nothing but a robe.”

“So that’s a detail you remember, huh?” I try my alpha-dog eye-contact stare but he doesn’t look away this time. One second ticks into two. Three. I look down into my wineglass. “You know I hate when you compare our stories. Why even ask me if you already know how it went? Jamie came jogging around the corner in his sweatbands bellowing, What the fuck, and the rest is history.”

I hope my twin didn’t finish telling it. World War III happened in this very kitchen. After he left, unable to trust himself to not kill me, I knelt on the floor and picked up the pieces of the Royal Albert dinner set we’d smashed. We’d thrown it at each other, plate after plate.

Another beautiful thing the Barrett twins could not deserve. Who do you think you are, anyway?

Tom gives me a don’t get grouchy look as he toes his boot around the skirting boards, wiggling and loosening everything he touches. “I don’t believe all the things your brother tells me about you. They always sound made up.”

“Then you replace out it’s true, and your illusions are shattered, yet again.”

“I don’t know about illusions, exactly. I’ve known you a long time.”

My third glass of wine goes down the hatch. “Jamie crawled around the front path replaceing the torn-up pieces of the offer. He taped it together. Can you believe that?”

“Yes. There would have been a dollar sign motivating him.”

“He set up a meeting with the guy, tried everything. He literally sent him a fruit basket. But I’d fucked it up.”

“Knowing you, you don’t regret it,” Tom says. I watch his expression settle into thoughtful, and I lean on the broken oven and watch him move around the room. What’s he looking for? The one thing that is salvageable? “What’s your next big adventure, then?”

“I’ll help pack up this place. Then I’m going to get on the first plane I come across.” I shrug when he looks dubious. “I mean it. I’ll probably just get a good deal on somewhere warm that doesn’t need a visa. And what’s your next big destination?” I can’t say honeymoon because it will come out like a burp. I picture Tom and Megan lying on a beach. Then I crop Megan out of the image.

“I’ll replace something cheap and flip it. That’s what I’m always doing next.”

“Enough work! Make sure your hotel has a fabulous pool,” I suggest through my teeth. Teenage Darcy used to sit on the edge and count his laps. I’d lose count, hypnotized by his rhythmic gasps of air. It took me a few years to realize they gave me the stomach shivers because they were hopelessly erotic. “You’re still swimming, right?”

He rolls his shoulders reflexively. “I haven’t had time. Not in probably two years. Where are you moving after this? Getting a rental?” His nose wrinkles. “Do me a favor, get a nice place.”

“I don’t know. I’ve only just gotten used to having a mailing address. I’ll put my stuff in storage and I’ll stay at the beach house when I’m back.” I hope that didn’t sound like, I’m traveling like a big spoiled baby forever, and when I’m not, I’ll be in Mommy and Daddy’s house eating breakfast in bed.

“I rebuilt their back deck. It was too small for them.” Typical Tom, sweating for the Barretts whenever required. “I’m sure they’re out on it right now, kissing under the moonlight.”

“Ugh, gross. Probably.” Mom and Dad have chemistry. I will leave it at that. “You didn’t even swim in the ocean while you were there?”

“I didn’t even think of it,” he says, looking a little surprised. “Whoops.”

“You belong in water. Next time, swim.” I go back into the living room and throw myself onto the couch. Patty hammers in from nowhere, louder than a T. rex, a pencil clenched between her teeth. I’ve got to ask the hard questions, to get them out of the way.

“Where are you going for your honeymoon?” No answer. I’ll try again. “I’ve been everywhere. I can give you guys help with your itinerary.” He avoids my eyes and I slump down into the cushions. Maybe if I don’t agree to be his photographer, I’ll be lucky to even get an invite. I can imagine Mom explaining it to me now. Small. Intimate. Only their closest family and friends.

Holy shit. That’s it. I’m not invited and he’s trying to work out how to tell me.

Tom moves to the dining room and risks turning the light on. It’s my little photography studio now. Boxes of merchandise sit against the wall. “This is what you do these days?”

“Yep.” I dig in my bag of marshmallows. Time to plug this aching void inside. I hit shuffle on Loretta’s retro stereo and the Cure comes on. The void gapes wider in a delicious way.

“Mugs.” He says it doubtfully. “You take photos of mugs so they can be sold on websites? I definitely thought Jamie had made that up.”

“It’s true.” I pack my mouth with sweet white foam and sip some wine to dissolve it all. “Not just mugs. Don’t look in that one,” I warn Tom when he goes to look in the boxes.

“What is it?” He flips open the box lid. “Okay then.”

“It’s surprisingly hard to get the lighting right on a ten-inch purple dildo.”

“I’m sure it’s impossible.” He is scandalized to the core. It is adorable. He looks back down, unable to resist.

“Don’t go digging in that dirty box, Tom, you’ll need brain bleach.” I have the strongest feeling he wants to.

I’d give my left ventricle to know what he thought about all that silicone. Disgusting? Interesting? On par with what’s in his navy cargo pants? It’s so hard to tell when he looks up. He rearranges his expression into prim disapproval.

God, such a good boy. I grin like a shark. “They let me keep stuff sometimes.” I watch as he skitters around the room off walls and furniture like a big pinball. Then I relieve him. “I’ve got so many mugs.”

“Mugs,” he says again like it’s the cause of all that is wrong in this world. “I don’t think this is very . . . you. You’re an award-winning portrait photographer.”

“Au contraire. Wistful portraits of sex toys are very much me these days.” I shrug at his expression. “Hey, I just shoot what they send me. I’ve personally taken every single product shot on the entire Internet.”

My voice blurs drunkenly at the edges and I know he hears it. “No one thinks about who takes the photos. They just click and add that dildo to their cart.”

I arch my back, unclip my bra, and sag back down with a groan. Out the armhole and I toss the bra onto the pile. Tom averts his eyes through the whole thing.

Except somehow, I feel like he watched me do it.